Our Mission:

My first husband, Capt. Jerry Zimmer, was an F4B Phantom jet pilot, whose aircraft was shot down on August 29, 1969, approximately 20 miles South of Da Nang, Vietnam, after six months in country. Neither Jerry nor his navigator, 1st Lt. Al Graf, was able to eject, before the aircraft crashed into the Que Son Mountains. Initially Jerry and Al were classified as Killed in Action/No Body Recovered (KIA/NBR). Years later, both Marines were listed as MIA, along with other service members whose bodies were never recovered.

Jerry has been gone nearly a half century, and hope for recovering his remains had run out a long time ago. However, in recent years our family became involved with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), now merged with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), and learned that Jerry’s and Al’s remains might, in fact, be recoverable, so we are doing everything possible to support their efforts to make this happen and bring our guys home where they belong.

Da Nang, Vietnam Current Weather

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Archive for January, 2012

Photo by Eric Long, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution – ‘Fly Marines! The Centennial of Marine Corps Aviation: 1912-2012’ will be on display January 14, 2012 through January 6, 2013 at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. The exhibition tells the story of United States Marine Corps aviation over the past 100 years.

By Christian Davenport, Published: January 13 (Washington Post)

James Butcher was a 20-year-old lance corporal who had been in Vietnam only a couple of months, but that was long enough to realize that the scene in front of him — a Marine, sitting alone, waiting for his flight at the Phu Bai Air terminal in 1967 — was a powerful image of solitude and quiet that war so rarely affords.

So Butcher, a combat artist, took out his sketchbook and started drawing, hoping to get the details right. Doing nothing, he knew, is an important part of combat. “It’s when you can contemplate where you are, what you’re doing,” he said. “It’s when you learn a lot about fear.”

Eventually his scribbling became a painting, titled “Waiting,” and it is part of an exhibit, “Fly Marines! The Centennial of Marine Corps Aviation: 1912-2012,” which opened Saturday at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Read more

This effort is one of the most beautiful tributes to military husbands from the UK, serving in Afghanistan. The choir is composed of their wives, who were brought together by Gareth Malone, a talented Brit who looks about 16 but actually is in his mid 30s and a choirmaster for the London Symphony Orchestra, etc. The lyrics are based on excerpts from letters that the couples wrote to each other while apart. The CD was the fastest selling single of 2011 in the UK!

Please visit http://www.militarywiveschoir.com to learn more about the story behind this extraordinary choir and Gareth Malone.